The Peopling of Ancient Egypt & the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script

A compilation of the papers prepared for and a report on the discussion on the Symposium organized by Unesco and subsequently published for preparation and publication of a General History of Africa. To begin with the invitees were sent information on what was expected of them and how they were supposed to prepare for the proceedings. However the event went as followed…..

Papers were submitted by Jean Vercoutter and Nicole Blanc…The one submitted by Prof Vercoutter used very outdated information and failed to present any new information regarding the peopling of Egypt or kmt, although admitting in that paper that “there is no doubt that Egyptian Civilization is first and foremost Afrikan. Ms. Blanc also submitted a paper that was better and presented good information on the Afrikan population south of the 23 parallel. The most important points presented by her paper was that the Arabs did not arrive in Egypt, Sudan etc. until 639 ad and that the ‘interlacustrine kingdoms form a bridge between Africa of the Nile region and the cluster of Bantu speaking peoples in Central Africa.

Secondly a very good but short article was presented by Theophile Obenga regarding the linguistic relationship between ancient kemetic and Coptic languages and modern African languages that demonstrated that the formers were not even remotely related to any Semitic or Berber languages. Thus being closely related to the Wolof and other sub-Saharan languages., having the single linguistic type , formal and grammatical structures. Later stating that the idea of a mixed language was linguistic nonsense in the proceedings.

Third, a report on the discussions were exciting, with a variety of the invitees being unprepared and showing limited ability and knowledge for a scholarly presentation of the magnitude that was brought to the table by those who were. Invitees such as …

Professor Ghallab “the human race during the Paleolithic period was more or less homogeneous and Caucasian”

Professor Abdullah “Km did not mean black and its derivatives did not refer to the color of individuals”

Professor Leclant “the Egyptians whose civilization was stable for three millenniums were neither white or Negro”

Professor El Nadury felt the population had a mixed component being that of Hamitic and Negro

Professor Abu Bakr “Egyptians never constituted a pure race, that it was impossible for it to have been pure black and that the blacks came from the Arabian peninsula.”

As presented the statements by theses invitees were dated and offered nothing new but conjecture and opinion maybe.. However there were those that came prepared especially one, who presented more evidence above and beyond what was needed to which proved beyond a shadow, for the evidence of that time, that Afrikans built and ran Egypt for thousands of years before others arrived and contributed nothing. These points in reality should have ended the discussion and the Symposium should have moved forward based on the following. Points presented by Prof Anta Diop were as followed....

Based on Glogers Law warm blooded animals and humans evolved in a humid climate, were heavily pigmented, ethnically homogeneous and Negroid, then subsequently populated other regions of the earth…. this population movement went from south to north

Skeletons with fragments of skin from ancient times had sufficient amounts of melanin to establish them as Negro as white skin has no melanin present

Present day Egypt, which has the same blood group (B) as the population of West Africa and not group(A2) which is characteristic of the white race

The major pharonic players and others during the dynastic period and before were Negro…Narmer, Zoser, Cheops, Mentuhoptep, Sesostris I , Netertari, Amenhophis I , Rameses, etc ., not to mention the Sphinx, the Anu Chieftain TeraNeter (the ancient Egyptian population belonged to the Anu according to Petrie)

Ancient written sources from Herodotus, Aristotle, Strabo ,Diodorus, Achilles, Diogenes laerius etc. described the Egyptians as Negro

The Biblical tradition considered Egypt to belong to the descendants of Ham

KMT the strongest term existing in the language of the Pharaohs indicated Blackness, that they called themselves KMJW and did not have a color distinction between them and the Nubians

And Finally the coup de tat Prof Diop invited participants to produce comparable representations of whites in dignified or commanding postures dating from early Pharaonic times of which non was produced by any of the invitees.

This was such a fun and informative book to read and the material presented by some as evidence of the peopling of Egypt for the lay or street historian was the best.